george-orwell

In his entire output, I can find only one piece of genuine unfairness: a thuggish attack on the poetry of WH Auden, whom he regarded as a dupe of the Communist Party. But even this was softened in some later essays. The truth is that he disliked Auden's homosexuality, and could not get over his prejudice. But much of the interest of Orwell lies in the fact that he was born prejudiced, so to speak, against Jews and the coloured peoples of the empire, and against the poor and uneducated, and against women and intellectuals__nd managed, in a transparent and unique way, to educate himself out of this fog of bigotry (though he never did get over his aversion to 'pansies').

The two things he most valued, which is to say liberty and equality, were not natural allies.

Winston Smith: Does Big Brother exist?O'Brien: Of course he exists.Winston Smith: Does he exist like you or me?O'Brien: You do not exist.

Having confronted the world with little except a battered typewriter and a certain resilience, he can now take posthumous credit for having got the three great questions of the 20th century essentially 'right.' Orwell was an early and consistent foe of European imperialism, and foresaw the end of colonial rule. He was one of the first to volunteer to bear arms against fascism and Nazism in Spain. And, while he was soldiering in Catalonia, he saw through the biggest and most seductive lie of them all__he false promise of a radiant future offered by the intellectual underlings of Stalinism.

The paperweight was the room he was in, and the coral was Julia's life and his own, fixed in a sort of eternity at the heart of the crystal.

I fear no hell, just as I expect no heaven. Nabokov summed up a nonbeliever__ view of the cosmos, and our place in it, thus: __he cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness._ The 19th-century Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle put it slightly differently: __ne life. A little gleam of Time between two Eternities._ Though I have many memories to cherish, I value the present, my time on earth, those around me now. I miss those who have departed, and recognize, painful as it is, that I will never be reunited with them. There is the here and now _ no more. But certainly no less. Being an adult means, as Orwell put it, having the __ower of facing unpleasant facts._ True adulthood begins with doing just that, with renouncing comforting fables. There is something liberating in recognizing ourselves as mammals with some fourscore years (if we__e lucky) to make the most of on this earth.There is also something intrinsically courageous about being an atheist. Atheists confront death without mythology or sugarcoating. That takes courage.

And remember also that in fighting against man we must not come to resemble him. Even when you have conquered him, do not adopt his vices.

Man serves the interests of no creature except himself.

Orwell wrote easily and well about small humane pursuits, such as bird watching, gardening and cooking, and did not despise popular pleasures like pubs and vulgar seaside resorts. In many ways, his investigations into ordinary life and activity prefigure what we now call 'cultural studies.

No special academic expertise is required for insight into the Orwellian use of language, only clear thinking and common sense.

The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect.